Wood Communications and Alpha Vision Design would like you, the security forces of this or other states, to consider their lovely surveillance cameras. Silicon Republic would like to facilitate them in making this invitation. To recap on previous opinions I've expressed- ANPR coupled with casual storage of all data recorded by the system will not withstand legal challenge.

A new site launched this week, offering out-of-print Irish books as free downloads under a Creative Commons licence. The Irish Literary Revival site has novels and poems, but is interested in hearing from any writer who might have a published out-of-print work that they'd like to see re-enter the world. They even accept non-fiction books.

Sometime contributor to tuppenceworth, Daragh O'Brien, has started his own blog. He opens up his shutters with a discussion of the inaccuracies in the Electoral Roll with the benefit of his professional expertise in Data Quality Management. More of the same will be a welcome addition to the world.

The front page of the Motoring supplement of today's Irish Times has an article on speed cameras. At the end it casually mentions that Gardaí expect that the cameras will record 11 million plates a month. Now, I know we've got road problems, but I don't think that limits the recording of cars to just those actually speeding.

Thus the Digested Annual Report draws to a close. All that remains is for me to point you in the direction of the RTE news report of the Data Protection Commissioner's comments at the launch of same. And, finally here's the link to the pdf of the report from the DPC website.

The Commissioner runs through in some detail the story of the first successful prosecution under the EU Regulations contained in Statutory Instrument 535/2003. Two key points:It is important to note that although I had evidence that the campaign involved the contacting of 165,000 subscribers, I can only prosecute in those cases where there is no consent from the recipient to receiving such calls.

What an innoculous looking headline. I can assure you that it was wrangled over by the author for quite some time. Garda matters During the year, the issue of subject access to personal data held by An Garda Síochána arose.